Last week, an old acquaintance went viral. Charles Withers had, according to his pregnant wife, disappeared around a year ago, leaving her to bring up one young child alone with another on the way. The pretty Massachusetts blonde posted a plea for information on Facebook. It was, she wrote, surprisingly difficult to divorce someone who refused to return your calls.
In an age of near-constant surveillance, how does it feel when the choice to disappear is taken from you?
Not long after the story surfaced, I received a message from a friend. ‘Do you remember Charlie Withers?’ he asked. I did. He had been part of our wider social circle, one of the boys at the neighbouring school. I was added to a WhatsApp group – ‘The Talented Mr Withers’ – of people from my childhood, some of whom I’d not spoken to in years. We were transfixed, searching through old messages, picking over teenage photos and sharing anecdotes that may have betrayed a hint of where he might have gone.
We weren’t the only ones looking. It took the internet little more than 24 hours to track the chef down, thousands of miles away in Texas. Women replied saying they’d matched with him on dating apps around Dallas and he’d been spotted in a video taken by the wife of Taylor Sheridan, creator of Yellowstone. Withers has, finally, contacted his estranged spouse. Too late. One TikTok user, whose videos on Withers have been viewed millions of times, branded him ‘America’s scumbag’. He’s actually from England.
Amateur sleuths are not always bad news. In the case of Gabby Petito, a 22-year-old American who disappeared during a road trip with her fiancé, internet users found clues that ultimately helped police find her remains. Curiosity is only human and, despite the sad conclusion in the Petito case, the curiosity of strangers can be useful.
There’s a fine line between truth-seeking and vigilantism, however. In India, there has been a rise in violence in connection with whisper networks on WhatsApp groups. Gossip leaks and is shared until it’s almost unrecognisable. There were 40 deaths and hundreds of injuries which stemmed from this kind of mob justice in 2018 alone, according to one LSE report.
In this case, if the original post is true, what Withers did was wrong and deceitful – not to mention cruel to his wife and children. But in an age of near-constant surveillance, how does it feel when the choice to disappear is taken from you? And when does the accused become the victim? I’m not sure I’d like to find out for myself.
One prolific TikToker, Jay Megan, who describes herself as an ‘internet sleuth’, has devoted a whole series to tracking and digging up dirt on Withers. Even after he had been tracked down, she continued to post videos accusing him of lying, stealing, having a cocaine habit and getting his ‘rich daddy’ to bail him out of trouble. In one video, she encouraged her followers to find his former employees (who, she claimed, he had ‘stiffed’) and offered to work with lawyers on their behalf. She threatened: ‘Charlie, if you think I’m playing with you, have you seen what I’ve been able to do in a day?’
Internet notoriety can be devastating: the organiser of a widely mocked Willy Wonka ‘immersive event’ in Glasgow said the coverage ruined his life. During the mass investigation into Withers, a man who was filmed singing karaoke was wrongly identified as my old friend, and had his face plastered across online gossip boards the world over. It’s hard to set the record straight once millions of people think they know something about you. Harder still to outrun a version of your life narrated by the vitriolic chorus of the internet.
My old friend went viral for all the wrong reasons
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17.04.2024
Last week, an old acquaintance went viral. Charles Withers had, according to his pregnant wife, disappeared around a year ago, leaving her to bring up one young child alone with another on the way. The pretty Massachusetts blonde posted a plea for information on Facebook. It was, she wrote, surprisingly difficult to divorce someone who refused to return your calls.
In an age of near-constant surveillance, how does it feel when the choice to disappear is taken from you?
Not long after the story surfaced, I received a message from a friend. ‘Do you remember Charlie Withers?’ he asked. I did. He had been part of our wider social circle, one of the boys at the neighbouring school. I was added to a WhatsApp group – ‘The Talented Mr Withers’ – of people from my childhood, some of whom I’d not spoken to in years. We were transfixed, searching through old messages, picking over teenage photos and sharing........
© The Spectator
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